Addressing and Preventing Wrongful Convictions

Our justice system is not perfect. As a result too often individuals are wrongly convicted of crimes that they did not commit. The NAACP believes that we need to openly address this problem so that we can also prevent wrongful convictions. We are working with coalition partners to further this work so that our communities do not continue to suffer the loss of family members and friends who were wrongly convicted.

The Innocence Project, a New York City based non-profit, uses groundbreaking DNA technology to free innocent people has provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Now an independent nonprofit organization closely affiliated with Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the Innocence Project’s mission is nothing less than to free the staggering numbers of innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring substantive reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment.

The following materials are provided by our partners at the Innocence Project: